Führer or Faker? Sixteen snaps of the creep of the century – or is he? [Link updated 2006]
“Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question“, source of the phrase ‘dismal science’.
. . . with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid down as a principle, which no eloquence . . . can invalidate or hide, except for a short time only, that no black man, who will not work according to what ability the gods have given him for working, has the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may be, but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be compelled, by the real proprietors of said land, to do competent work for his living. This is the everlasting duty of all men, black or white, who are born into this world. To do competent work, to labor honestly according to the ability given them; for that, and for no other purpose, was each one of us sent into this world; and woe is to every man who by friend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this, the end of his being. That is the “unhappy” lot – lot equally unhappy cannot otherwise be provided for man. Whatsoever prohibits or prevents a man from this, his sacred appointment, to labor while he lives on earth – that, I say, is the man’s deadliest enemy; and all men are called upon to do what is in their power, or opportunity, toward delivering him from it. If it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him, then his own indolence is the enemy he must be delivered from; and the first “right” he has – poor indolent blockhead, black or white – is, that every unprohibited man, whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing that way, shall endeavor to “emancipate” him from his indolence, and, by some wise means, as I said, compel him to do the work he is fit for. This is the eternal law of nature for a man, my beneficient Exeter Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and, if need be, compelled, to do what work the Maker of him has intended, by the making of him for this world.
Roderick Long defends Herbert Spencer:
So what common ground could there be between Spencer and the eugenicists? Both, to be sure, were “Social Darwinists,” if that means that both thought there were important sociopolitical lessons to be drawn from evolutionary biology. But Spencer and the eugenicists drew opposite lessons. For the eugenicists, the moral of evolutionary biology was that the course of human evolution must be coercively managed and controlled by a centralized, paternalistic technocracy. For Spencer, by contrast, the moral was that coercive, centralized, paternalistic approaches to social problems were counterproductive and so would tend to be eliminated by the spontaneous forces of social evolution, which would instead favor a system of fully consensual human relationships.
Admittedly, industrialist Andrew Carnegie was an admirer of Herbert Spencer, and the Carnegie Institution appears to have played an important role in the eugenics movement. But so what? I do not know how far Carnegie himself personally supported the tyrannical policies that Black discusses, but suppose he supported them up to the hilt; if Carnegie said nice things about Spencer, but also supported policies antithetical to everything Spencer stood for, this can hardly be laid at Spencer’s door.
Rethinking the Articles of Confederation, by Scott Trask
The American confederation was destined to become a free-trade area, even without a consolidated union. Hamilton, in Federalist No. 12, all but admitted, and complained, that such would be the case. He worried that the multiplicity of state jurisdictions would keep tariffs too low and variable for the raising of sufficient revenue or the provision of industrial promotion.
The relative situation of these States; the number of rivers with which they are intersected, and of bays that wash their shores; the facility of communication in every direction; the affinity of language and manners; the familiar habits of intercourse – all these are circumstances that would conspire to render an illicit trade between them a matter of little difficulty and would insure frequent evasions of the commercial regulations of each other. The separate States or confederacies would be necessitated by mutual jealousy to avoid the temptations to that kind of trade by the lowness of their duties.
The English Bill of Rights was enacted in October 1689. The US BoR was submitted for ratification in September 1789. Anybody happen to know if the centennial coincidence was played up in the rhetoric of the time?
Daniel Webster:
It is hardly too strong to say that the [US] Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force . . . .
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit . . . .